When The Red Ribbon Is Lost
by BrokePerception
Summary: Miss Honey helps her adopted daughter deal with puberty.
PROMPT BY: _schuylergirls_ (Tumblr) ── Miss Honey helps her adopted daughter deal with puberty. Bonding.

* * *

When she looks over the rim of her full coffee cup, she lets her eyes sweep across her adopted daughter's furrowed brow. They flicker down to her hands and the way her thumbs seem to fly across the touch screen of the girl's new phone as she forms ── or so Jenny assumes ── a text message to one of her friends. A small smile taints her lips as they rest against the brittle porcelain, the liquid still slightly too hot to just down, but she still enjoys the way the cup's warmth spreads across her hands while she waits for it to cool down enough.

While quite tech-savvy herself, if she says so herself, and while she feels she is mostly up-to-date with new technologies and their specific use, she has no clue how the dark-haired thirteen-year-old girl who sits curled up on the other end of the couch does manage to type so flawlessly so fast. The TV is on, but by then it has become more of a dull sort of white noise as Matilda is focused only on the text she intends to send and Jennifer Honey on her as she does this.

The blonde teacher releases a soft sigh as her eyes slide over Matilda's long dark hair, now in a thick braid over her one shoulder, the customary red ribbon she wore in her hair when she came in Miss Honey's life long gone now that she is several years older. Jenny can no longer ignore that the girl she adopted, whom she took in both so unexpectedly yet not and loved and cared for like she was her own has really started to grow up and develop into a woman, complete with the behavior she has by now learned to associate with a 'typical teenager'. Jennifer Honey is very well aware that she has no right to complain, though, for Matilda, despite her grumpy moods every now and then, is hardly ever rude or disrespectful to her or to anyone else ── at least that she's aware of.

She's learned to love sleep more and has had more of a morning mood of late, especially on the weekends when she doesn't have to go to school and can sleep in. Matilda's eating patterns have changed quite a bit as well. In fact, it was earlier that week when the girl asked for seconds of the spaghetti her mom had made that Jenny made a mental note to herself to prepare more food for them from then on, for Matilda was beginning to eat more than she remembered.

Another way in which Jenny can tell her daughter has really started to become physically mature on top of her intellectual maturity is her need for independency, obvious in the way she doesn't seem to have a need to interact with Jenny at all as she sits on the other end of the old but comfy couch. The blonde teacher suspects that even though Matilda doesn't say much, she still does enjoy being in her mom's presence ── after all, she could just as easily barricade herself in her room. The fact that Matilda hasn't completely turned her back on her mom despite her 'difficult age' does help the older blonde to accept how fast time goes. It has only ever been the two of them, and it has been fine that way as well. It would be hard for her to learn that Matilda doesn't need her any longer. In any case, Jenny has never really felt the need for an additional member of their two-headed little family, barring the day they 'decided' to adopt Baloo, their lively two-year-old Labrador. She couldn't just say no to those big blue eyes when Matilda saw the ad from the shelter and begged for them to take her in. They got her the next day. Matilda's logical thought somehow offered a solution to any potential issue that could arise.

It seems only yesterday that she signed the adoption documents and helped Matilda move in. It seems only yesterday that she celebrated her first birthday in their house, complete with a birthday party. It seems only yesterday that she heard her office door creak open and looked up at the sound only to find a very fidgety Matilda in the doorway, with a sheepish look on her blushy face as she looked down at her shoes and mumbled some words that she was only forced to repeat to make herself remotely audible. It is hard to believe it has been nearly a year since that day now.

* * *

 _"Mom?"_

 _Whereas she already heard the quite familiar_ creak _of her office door being pushed open further than it was, it is Matilda's voice that really makes Jennifer Honey lift her head up from the essays she has started grading, her red pen halting over the paper she is on. She regards her adopted daughter carefully with a small crease upon her forehead over the very rim of her blue-framed angular glasses upon seeing the seemingly nervous way in which she stands there ── she's not used to seeing Matilda this way at all. Fleetingly, she remembers the dark-haired girl looking at her feet in a bit of the same manner after accidentally hitting a vase from the table, which resulted in it falling in innumerous pieces to the floor. It is not a look she has seen much lately, and the tone in which the words leave her mouth only make the teacher's concern grow._

 _"What's going on, Matilda?" Jenny asks in a calm tone. She very rarely had to dumb things down when addressing her adopted daughter, or change her speech to talk to her. When they speak, ever since they met, it doesn't feel very different from when she talks to an actual fellow adult. She doesn't know if that says more about Matilda or people in general, though. In any case, most of their conversations are as calm and rational as can be, and this time will not be different._

 _When Matilda takes several deep breaths and steels herself for having to say the words she has to say, she feels her face burn and just grow redder than it already is, and she can't convince herself to look at her mom in that moment through the mortification she feels. It is not that she can't talk to her about it, because she absolutely can ── otherwise, she wouldn't be there. It is simply the fact that she's incredibly embarrassed, though she doesn't know exactly why. It is only normal for girls to begin their cycles once they're physically mature enough to do so. It is absolutely normal for them to bleed every month as an indication of their female fertility, to prepare for potential conception. She learned the biology of it many years prior, as well as all of the technicalities, so to speak... but still. "I just got my period. Can you help me with pads and all?"_

 _The blonde only frowns a bit more at the rush of words that flitted past her daughter's lips into the air between them. She feels the cogs in her head turn as she does her very best to discern any existing words from the girl's ramble as it reaches her ears, but without luck. "I'm sorry?" she voices when she has to conclude she failed to determine exactly what her daughter needs._

 _A deep and audible sigh falls from her lips as the thirteen-year-old lifts her gaze up to look at her mother figure properly, aware that, unless she wants to have to repeat herself endlessly, she should stop talking to her shoes... Part of her would really like to keep looking at the tips of her shoes, though. "I just got my period," Matilda says slightly slower than before, much clearer. "I wondered if you could help with pads and all of that."_

 _The pieces do fall together at last as the girl repeats the words she said before. She thought she already heard 'pads' the first time when her daughter addressed her, but she figured she didn't hear correctly. It didn't make sense. She eyes the brunette thoroughly and notes the paleness of her pace aside from the patches of pink that dust her cheekbones. It is not hard to notice how Matilda wrings her hands, too, folding and unfolding them. Vaguely, in a far back corner of her full mind, Jennifer Honey manages to remember how she herself felt back in the days when she got her first period. She felt scared, somehow, and upset, even if she knew the mechanics of what was happening to her in much the same way as Matilda does now. She feels a bit torn between asking as little as remotely possible, so as not to embarrass Matilda more, and asking a lot of questions to create an air of normalcy on the other hand that implies that it doesn't have to be weird and that she's open to talking to her daughter about this part of life, too. She decides to leave it up to Matilda as she lowers the pen to the wooden desk top, lifting her hand to take her glasses off of her face, eyeing Matilda more closely, no layer of glass between them, however thin. "Would you like to talk about it?" she asks._

 _"No..." she says right away, eyes widening as if it is truly the most horrible of suggestions Jenny could come with. As she lets the words sink in, though, she doubts her quickly-given answer and starts to mumble again. "I mean, maybe. I'm not sure," Matilda admits. A part of her wants to talk about it, but another doesn't, though mainly because she has no idea how._

 _Jennifer Honey smiles a half-smile. She gets it. She uncrosses her ankles before she places her bare feet on the parquet and moves to rise from her desk chair, fingers worrying the legs of her glasses, folding them against the lenses, before she lays them beside the essay she started to grade. Jenny's gaze is soft and open as she gets to her bare feet and walks towards Matilda and nudges her head silently to indicate to her that she should follow, the girl blindly doing so as they make for what the dark-haired girl suspects to be the bathroom._

 _Miss Honey deliberately doesn't speak to give Matilda the time to determine for herself whether she wants to talk about the changes to her body she's experiencing or not. She has concluded that is the best way to approach Matilda the rare times bouts of upset or uncertainty overwhelm her. However rare, she must admit that the frequency of those moments has increased a bit in the past few months. This, too, she realizes, is part of going through puberty, when comparing various aspects of life with friends and enemies alike begins to play a bigger role and, as such, inevitably leads to self-doubt on occasion, however brief or insistent._

 _Nearly instinctively, the teacher's hand reaches up to switch on the light when the bathroom door opens. "I don't know how much blood you're losing so far," she begins, feminine fingers with well-manicured but never overly-decorated fingernails taking a hold of the cold silver-colored handle before pulling back a specifically-chosen drawer from the bathroom cabinet that's under the sink. With this, the teacher reveals two packs of individually-wrapped pads to sight. One is a light blue color, the other a far darker blue._

 _Intuitively, the teacher reaches for the pack on the left and fishes an individually-wrapped pad in a baby blue color from the drawer before she turns to Matilda and hands it to her, who silently accepts. "These are, as far as my experience goes, considered one of the most 'regular' in size, for when you have a mostly normal flow. If you feel like you bleed more heavily or if you would like to feel more secure at night, you should take the darker blue pads," she says. "Alright?"_

 _As she nods, Matilda glanced at the two packs and reaches for one of the dark blue pads, retrieving it before she looks up at her mom, who smiles at her gently before she pushes the open drawer back in; her eyes never trail away from Matilda's face. "I don't know what is a little or a lot," Matilda admits as she looks down at her hands and the pads she fumbles ── anywhere but Jenny's face. "It just feels like it is a lot right now. I don't know if it is."_

 _A gentle sigh escapes her lips, and the teacher reaches over to push a strand of dark hair back that's been in Matilda's face for the past few minutes already. "I know," she says. She noted the girl's double meaning, and Jenny's response works for either interpretation. Matilda does seem overwhelmed, but maybe that is only normal when Mother Nature knocks at your door to tell you that you have become fertile, so to speak. "It is one of those things you will learn in time, like so many things. Meanwhile, remember that you can come to me with any questions that you have or concerns."_

 _This time, it is Matilda who sighs then blinks up at her mom's calming expression. "Thanks, mom," she says in a soft whisper, encircling Jenny's waistline while leaning in to embrace her. Miss Honey returns the gesture right away, and as they hold one another tightly, Matilda feels her very busy and troubled mind slow down just a bit, and the "Help, I've got to shower!" and "How do I use those things exactly?" questions ── two of many ── that fill it come to a stop just for right now._

 _She doesn't know if she should be happy or sad about this new change, if she should laugh or not, and if not, if it is reasonable to cry. This revelation is one more step in the direction of adulthood for Matilda again, and neither Matilda or Miss Honey can tell if they should be happy or sad about her inching closer and closer to the line between 'non-adult' and 'adult', but at least they'll have each other while they try to decide._


End file.
